Butte semi-weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1886-1890, 1887-05-14
BILL NYES TEETH.
he WRITES OF THEM 70 HIS JOUR-
NAusTIc SON, HENRY.

With the Dentist.
AsHEvnLE, N. c., Feb. 16. 1881.
NY DEAR HENRY: Your last issue OF the
Retina, your new thought vehicle, published
at New Belony, this state. was received yes
terday, like this number, I think, better
than I did the first. While the news in il
seems fresher, the editorial assertions are not
SO fresh: You do not state that you "have
come to stay' this week, but I infer you &C.
cupy the same position you did last week with
| reference to that.
was more especially interested in your
| piece about how to rear children and the
| care of parents. I read it to your mother
| last night while she was setting her bread.
| Nothing tickles me very often at any time of
life, and when I laugha loud peal of laughter
at anything nowadays it's got to be q pretty
blamed good thing. I can tell you that. But
your piece about bringing up children made
me laugh real hard. I enjoy a piece like that
from the pen Of a juicy young brain like
yours. It almost made me young again to
read the works of. my journalistic gosling
son.
You also say that Steething is the most
trying time for parents" Do you mean that
parents are more fretful when they are teeth
ing than any other time3 Your mother and
me reckoned that you must mean that. II
30, it shows your great research. How a
mere child, hardly out Of knee pantiesA a
young shoot like you, who was never a parent
for Q moment in his life, can enter into and
understand the woes that beset parents il
moro than I can understand. If you had
been through what I have while teething !
could see how you might understand and
write about it, but at present I do not see
through it. The first teeth I cut as a parent
made me- very restless. l was sick two yean
ago with q new disease that was just out, and
the doctor gave ne something for it that
made my teeth fall like the leaves of autumn.
In six weeks after I began to convalesce my
mouth was perfectly baldheaded. For days
I didn't bite into a Ben Davis apple that ]
didn't leave a fang into it.
Well, after that I saw an advertisement in
The Rural Rustler-a paper I used to take
then-of a place where you could get a set of
teeth for Sc. I didn't want to buy a high
priced and gaudy set Of teeth at the tail end
of such life as I had led, and I knew that
teeth. no matter how expensive they might
be, would be of little avail to coming gener.
ations, so I went over to the place named in
the paper and got an impression of my mouth
taken
PLASTER OF PARIS.
There is really nothing in this life that will
take the stiff necked pride out of a man like
viewing a plaster cast of his tottering mouth.
The dentist fed me with a large ladle full of
putty or plaster of paris, I reckon, and told
me to hold it in my mouth till it set.
don't remember a time in all my life when
the earth and transitory things ever looked SO
undesirable and so triding as they did while !
sat there in that big red barber chair with my
mouth full of cold putty. Ifelt just as a man
might when he is being taxidermied.
After a while the dentist took out the cast.
It was q cloudy day, and so it didn't look
much like me after all. If it had I would
nave sent you one. After I'd set again two or
three times we got a pretty fair Likeness, he
said, and I went home, having paid IS and
left my address.
Three weeks after that q small boy came
with my new teeth.
They were nice, white, shiny teeth, and did
used to them. I wished at first that the gums
had been duller red and that the teeth had
looked so new. I put them in my mouth,
but they felt cold and distant. I took them
out and warmed them in the sunlight. PEG
pie going by no doubt thought that I did lit
show that I was able to nave new teeth, but
that was not the case.
I wore them all that forenoon while ]
butchered. There were times during the fore
when I wanted to take them out, but
when a man is butching be hates to take his
teeth out just because they hurt.
Neighbors told me that after my mouth got
hardened on the inside it would feel better.
But, oh, how it relieved me at night to take
teeth out and put them On the top Of q
cool bureau, where the wind could blow
their whiskers How I hated to re-
sumo them in the morning and start in OH an
other long day, when the roof of my mouth
like a big red bunion and my gums like a
pale red stone bruise.
A year ago, Henry, about 2:3O in the after
noon, I think it was, I left that set Of teeth in
he rare flank of a barbecue I was to in our
own.
Since then I have not been so pretty, per.
laps, but I nave no more uniforms on the
alters of my mouth and my note is just as
GOOD at 30 days as ever it was.
You are right, Henry, when you go on to
tate in your paper that teething is the most
time for parents.
Ia ia, as the teller says. Your father,
BILL NYE.
Chicago News